The code repository is giving students credits or free access to a set of 14 developer tools.

Long on a quest to teach aspiring engineers best practices, code repository GitHub on Tuesday released a set of 14 developer tools that gives students credits or free access to services, including payments platform Stripe, domain registrar Namecheap, and GitHub.

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Though GitHub has offered educational discounts for years, it only formally launched its education site in February 2014, offering students and teachers free accounts and discounts to other services. GitHub’s educational program now has more than 100,000 students who collectively push code out more than 50,000 times a day.

“We want to help students get access to real-world tools, real-world experience to learn how to think programmatically and algorithmically and how to apply computing power to what they want to accomplish,” John Britton, GitHub’s education evangelist, told Fast Company.

Britton said it “was not a hard sell” to get participating companies on board, especially since GitHub would take care of the administrative work, including verifying students’ statuses. Currently, the GitHub Student Developer Pack is available to students ages 13 and older pursuing a degree, diploma, or certification. Down the line, the developer pack will be available to those enrolled in noncredentialed coding bootcamps as well, though Britton did not specify a time frame.

Unreal Engine, game development tools
Unreal Engine ($19/month) while enrolled as a student

About the author

Based in San Francisco, Alice Truong is Fast Company's West Coast correspondent. She previously reported in Chicago, Washington D.C., New York and most recently Hong Kong, where she (left her heart and) worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.